I just….don’t.

Are you guys still hanging on to every word that’s happening on this show? Is it still compelling for you? Do you find new things to get excited about?

I just can’t. I don’t. I really want to like all these people. But I find myself rooting for Juliette’s publicist more than anyone, because she’s the only one who seems to believe it when the sassy words come out of her mouth. The rest of these people, I don’t know.

Like Juliette, for example. Even though her momma’s pills are going to wreak havoc because nobody’s ever had pills before (oh, and as if they wouldn’t say her name on them), she’s forgotten the whole affair – the having-a-mother part, that is – ever existed. No, the nail polish scandal still smarts, but oh, that whole terrible parent thing? No big deal.

I cut Juliette more slack than I ever expect to because she at least seems like she’s having fun. She’s running around in a jet and making fun of clean-teen football players and she seems to legitimately care about the game, so that’s all kind of amusing. I think she is still astonishingly naïve about press in a way that doesn’t speak to the level of fame she has and wants, but maybe we take what we can get.

The paparazzi plot brings up a kind of big question though – where’s all the fame? I have never been to Nashville, though this show’s endless sunny panoramas make me want to check it out, but it seems like there’s never an endless stream of fans following her, following Rayna. In fact, the only place anyone seems to congregate is at the bars to see stupid Avery.

So is Rayna not really the superstar we’ve been led to believe? For all the pictures of her gorgeous house and, you know, four-foot paintings of her daughters which aren’t at all creepy, I could use a few more lingering shots of her platinum records. If she had any. Did she? Was she on tour for years, at some point? Is there a hilarious story of the time the tour bus broke down and Rayna and Deacon literally had to sing their way home?

I am underwhelmed by Rayna’s celebrity. I am hard-pressed to believe that there wouldn’t be dozens of producers lined up to work with her because at least it’s a sure-thing paycheck, if not a musical revolution. Am I nuts? The show hasn’t, thankfully, tried to sell me that Rayna’s the greatest voice of her generation or anything like that, but still. Is it realistic that she and Bucky literally have to bang on an outside door at night? Maybe I don’t know Nashville, and maybe I don’t know their ways, but doesn’t it seem like they would at least have a meeting room where someone could be rude to them?

I am kind of done with Rayna, to be honest. Is that sacrilege? You know it is. But the woman wakes up every day because her no-love husband still cares enough to bring her coffee, she can’t seem to muster up actual enthusiasm for trying to reinvigorate her career – I get that she’s Rayna James and she doesn’t have to try, but is it so much to ask for a little enthusiasm? Yeah sure, there was a speech about Mall moms and SUVs, but she didn’t even break a sweat delivering it.

Maybe this is a rare situation where a lesser actor might have made everything better? Maybe if someone else had to work harder to establish Rayna as at once personable but professional, I wouldn’t have such a hard time believing that at this point in her life, she’s having this particular brand of problem? Maybe if she was the one who was very famous but very bratty, she would finally come to the point where she’d burned all her bridges in town?

The only problem with the Scarlett storyline is that I am supposed to be sad about it. Obviously I and everyone else in the world am happy to see that slimy Avery turned out to be slimy, but let’s get real here. The whimpering waif we’ve met for the last six episodes couldn’t scream like that at him if she tried. Where did she suddenly acquire self-possession and respect? For that matter, where did she suddenly acquire an uncle? I know she stops in to see him once every three weeks, but it’s not like it feels authentic or that they care about one another for real.

In fact, you know who seems to care about one another? Of ALL the people on this show? Teddy and Lamar. Yep, I said it. I’m sure they have a horrible, disgusting outlook on the world. They played dirty, no doubt. But they talk to each other and seem to have a vested interest in each others’ future. And now, with Coleman in possession of the pictures, he will do something with them. WE HOPE. I don’t love that this political storyline that has nothing to do with music is the most active one in the show, but maybe if something could happen with Rayna or Juliette or Scarlett in a meaningful way, we could get moving here. I would settle for the addition of a male actor who doesn’t look like every other actor on the damn show. Nobody in Nashville has a weight problem or curly hair?